JPMorgan Corporate Challenges See Growth in Popularity and Gamesmanship

David Nightingale, a former all-American, winning the JPMorgan Corporate Challenge race in Central Park last June.

J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge

By LINDSAY CROUSE

June 3, 2014

When his Manhattan hedge fund entered a corporate relay race, a young trader named David Nightingale gained a leadership role: ringer.

A senior manager flew Nightingale to London for the 2012 Bloomberg Square Mile Relay, in which 10 teammates are each supposed to run a mile loop in the city’s financial district. But Nightingale, a former all-American distance runner at Princeton, seared through his first leg ahead of the pack, and then sprinted a later lap in place of a colleague.

The next year, after Nightingale ran his leg, he also carried the baton for two other colleagues, helping his company rise into the top 10 teams.

Barclays won both races, but Nightingale said he thought crossing the line had paid off.

“It was amazing,” he said in a recent interview in New York. “When they saw how our company did, people congratulated our I.T. guy, whose name I was running under, for his 5:08 anchor lap.”

A top runner in New York City, Nightingale won the 3.5-mile JPMorgan Corporate Challenge in Central Park last year.

“It’s a great way to get extra credibility from your boss,” he said.

In two Corporate Challenge races this week, a total of 30,000 professionals will change into singlets and chase one another around Central Park in what has become an annual ritual in certain circles. The main goals are camaraderie and team building, but in a region full of people who do not like to lose, the team competition can be heated.

As their popularity has surged since the 1970s, corporate races have featured nimble young runners who look nothing like the midlevel executives whose names they run under, spectacular finish times self-reported by aging workers, and entrants as remarkably fast as they are new to the companies they represent.

“It may not be the Olympics, but it’s what we’ve got,” said Benjamin Lawsky, New York State’s superintendent of financial services. “There’s a lot of tension and intensity in our work. We sit across the table from the firms we race against, and it’s an interesting change to exercise that competition out on the course. Then the next day, it’s business as usual.”

In the state Department of Financial Services, Lawsky’s office, JPMorgan is a main rival. The banking giant and its predecessors have sponsored the race since 1977, frequently winning titles as well. Now that Lawsky employs two of the city’s fastest runners, he hopes to catch the banks on the racecourse.

JPMorgan once entertained the series finalists in its boardroom on Park Avenue, overlooking the championship course. The competition has grown more intense, and Corporate Challenges are now staged on five continents. The top-qualifying teams now earn trips to annual showdowns in places like Singapore and Johannesburg. This year’s championship will be in London, with a reception at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

“We treat these guys like Olympians,” said Alan Tieuli, who has helped organize the Corporate Challenge series for the past 24 years.

Some companies have found clever ways to keep their edge.

“There’s a saying, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying,’ ” Tieuli said. “So, of course, we’ve had teams that will scour our rule book and see what they can get away with, maybe try to steal a championship. When they find the loopholes, we can’t stop it; we just change the rules for next time.”

In 2010, after General Electric flew employees to compete in the San Francisco race, fielding an unusually fast winning team, Tieuli said, organizers began limiting teams to one runner from out of town.

The next year, another company sent five new employees to its local race and qualified for the championship. At race headquarters, alarm bells went off again.

“We learned from that,” Tieuli said. “We don’t want any small company putting together a team of four ringers where the only reason they’re entering the race is to take a championship spot.”

Organizers changed the rules so the team championship qualifiers had to field at least 10 runners, at $50 each.

After races, team captains scramble to configure their optimal lineups, guessing whether their opponents will enter their top finishers in the men’s, women’s or mixed-team division. And the rules have been changed so individual runners cannot score for their companies two years in a row.

As John Honerkamp, New York Road Runners’ team captain, said: “You have to think, will JPMorgan stack their men’s team or their coed team? And then you try to figure out where your chances are best. It takes real strategy, and it’s not easy.”

Inverting the traditional workplace hierarchy, junior employees are often responsible for their company’s performance. The race is a rare opportunity for distinction.

Gian-Paul Caccia won four Corporate Challenge races, including two in 2012, when he represented Wolverine Trading in New York, where he worked, and in Chicago, where the firm is based.

“It’s one of those competitions you can take seriously because it’s a game,” he said. “The traders will make joking bets on what my time will be and what place I’ll come in before the race. You want to meet their expectations. We get into competition with our clients. A client will call me up and say, ‘I swear I’ve got someone faster than you,’ and right away, you have common ground. It’s good for relationships.”

“We know everyone in this industry watches this race, so it’s good to win,” he continued. “It’s easy to get serious about it, because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter too much.”

When John Traugott won for Credit Suisse in 2006, the head of his group emailed the chief executive, who was the fastest senior executive in the race the year before.

“The next Friday, they wheeled in drinks and food to celebrate and invited everyone on the floor, where the head of my group did a toast,” Traugott said. “Everyone on Wall Street is a little competitive; it’s nice to be able to help win for your company.”

Lawsky, who rebuked Credit Suisse last month as it pleaded guilty to tax evasion, is now prepared to lead his younger, faster employees from behind. For them, the race falls at the nexus of the professional and the athletic.

“Honestly, this race makes me more nervous than any other on my calendar this year,” said Jeanna Composti, a deputy director in Lawsky’s office, who is trying to qualify for the Olympic marathon trials. “We know it’s all in good fun, but the expectations can be real.”

Distance running has a longstanding presence in finance. Caccia, the four-time Corporate Challenge winner, recently moved to a startup with 12 employees, seven of whom are serious runners.

Albert H. Gordon, an eminent New York banker, started running marathons in his 80s. Before his death in 2009 at 107, he would sometimes run or walk from New York’s airports to Manhattan.

Some companies turn the competition on themselves. The hedge fund Bridgewater organizes a race, known as the scrum, through its marshy Connecticut campus. The winner receives two airline tickets to anywhere in the world.

In the Corporate Challenge, JPMorgan emphasizes team bonding above all else. Its rivals concur, mostly.

“Look, going out there and giving your best is what it’s all about,” Lawsky said. “But winning is even better.”